Cranberry Harvest Time

Suddenly it is winter. I have missed the gloomy grey of the west coast fall. It is when I get the most writing done, and when I remember my dreams the most.


At the farm, they have begun to harvest the cranberries, It is like living in the middle of an island (of course we are on an island), but now it is a much smaller one with all the fields flooded.

The flooded fields have attracted all sorts of ducks. It is lovely to see them. There have been so few of them coming through this year. I am not sure why they have been so scarce. The eagles have killed many of the ducks around the farm, but it seems to me there are fewer in general.

In fact, I think the eagles were pretty desperate for food, because they hunted all the herons this year.

Drying Apples in the New Dehydrator

We had an unexpected windfall, so we decided to use the proceeds to buy a dehydrator. We probably should have bought a new fridge, but we decided to be whimsical instead. I am not sure if the dehydrator will pay for itself. It does have a ten year warranty, so maybe it will. Anyway, it sits where our fridge used to and it does use much less energy.



I love apple chips, so we went to the UBC Botanical Gardens Apple festival and bought around 12 pounds of apples for drying. We have Czech, a King, and a long keeper apple. I read somewhere that if you planted all the seeds of an apple, each seed would produce a different variety. I am not sure if this is true or why this would be the case.


As you can see the apples turned out really well. I used a mandolin cutter to speed up the task and to get even portions for consistent drying. After cutting, I put them in a citric acid water bath, rinsed and then dried them at 135 degrees F for 8 to 15 hours. I made various thicknesses, so the drying time varies. The dehydrator costs between 4 to 8 cents an hour to run, and it heats up the kitchen and makes it smell nice. It also attracted wasps, but they have now gone to ground for the winter.

The Fall